And they went in before the Queen,

then pulled herself up a few inches, cried out and fell heavily to the ground. Slowly, dazedly she picked herself up and looked at me. A splendid performance. "I can't do it," she said huskily. "You can see I can't. What are you trying to do to me? What's wrong?" I didn't answer, and she rushed on. "II'm not staying here. I'm going back to the cabin." "Later." I caught her arm roughly as she made to move away. "Stand there where I can watch you." I jumped up, wriggled inside the control cabin, reached down and pulled her up after me, none too gently, and without a word I led her straight into the galley. "The Mickey Finn dispensary," I observed. "An ideal quiet spot it is, too." She had her mask off now, and I held up my hand to forestall her as she opened her mouth to speak. "Dope, Miss Ross. But of course you wouldn't know what I'm talking about." She stared at me unblinkingly, made no answer. "You were sitting here when the plane crashed," I went on. "Possibly on this little stool here? Right?" She nodded, again without speaking. "And, of course, were flung against this front bulkhead here. Tell me, Miss Ross, where's the metal projection that tore this hole in your back?" She stared at the lockers, then looked slowly back to me. "Isis that why you've brought me here" "Where is it?" I demanded. "I don't know." She shook her head from side to side and took a backward step. "What does it matter? Andand dopewhat is the matter? Please." I took her arm without a word and led her through to the radio cabin. I trained the torch beam on to the top of the radio cabinet. "Blood, Miss Ross. And some navy blue fibres. The blood from the cut on your back, the fibres from your tunic. Here's where you were sittingor standingwhen the plane crashed. Pity it caught you off balance. But at least you managed to retain your hold on your gun." She was gazing at me now with sick eyes, and her face was a mask carved from white papiermache. "Missed your cue, Miss Rossyour next line of dialogue was 'What gun?'. I'll tell youthe one you had lined up on the second officer. Pity you hadn't killed him then, isn't it? But you made a good job of it later. Smothering makes such a much less messy job, doesn't it?" "Smothering?" She had to try three times before she got sony digital camera filter the word out. "On cue, on time," I approved. "Smothering. When you murdered the second officer in the cabin last night." "You're mad," she whispered. Her lips, startlingly red against the ashen face, were parted and the brown eyes, enormous with fear and sick despair. "You're mad," she repeated unsteadily. "Crazy as a loon," I agreed. Again I caught her arm, pulled her out on to the flight deck and trained my flashlight on the captain's back. "You wouldn't, of course, know anything about this either." I leaned forward, jerked up the jacket to expose the bullet hole in the back, then stumbled and all but fell as she gave a long sigh and crumpled against me. Instinctively I caught her, lowered her to the floor, cursed myself for having fallen for the fainting routine even for a second, and ruthlessly stabbed a stiff couple of fingers into the solar plexus, just below the breastbone. There was no reaction, just no reaction at all. The faint had been as genuine as ever a faint can be and she was completely unconscious. The next few minutes, while I sat beside her on the front seat of the plane waiting for her to recover consciousness, were some of the worst I have ever gone through. Self-reproach is a hopeless word to describe the way I swore at myself for my folly, my utter stupidity and unforgivable blindness, above all for the brutality, the calculated cruelty with which I'd treated this poor, crumpled young girl by my side. Especially the cruelty in the past few minutes. Perhaps there had been excuse enough for my earlier suspicions, but there was none for my latest actions: if I hadn't been so consumed by anger, so utterly sure of myself so that the possibility of doubt never had a chance to enter my mind, if my mind hadn't been concentrated, to the exclusion of all else, on the exposure of her guilt, I should have known at least that it couldn't have been she who had jumped down from the control cabin half an hour ago when I had rushed up the aisle, for the simple but sufficient reason that she had been incapable of getting up there in the first place. Quite apart from her injury, I should have been doctor enough to know that the arms and shoulders I had seen while attending to her back that evening weren't built for the acrobatic performance necessary to swing oneself up and through the smashed windscreen. That had been no act she had put on when she had fallen back into the snow, I could see that clearly now; but